Unstable wet snow on Relay Peak.

A relatively poor overnight snow surface refreeze occurred in this area last night. At 10:30 am, snow surface conditions were a mix of unsupportable wet snow and areas of weak (1F hard) but supportable surface melt freeze crust 2 to 8 cm thick. By 11:45 am, very few areas of supportable crust remained on E-SE-S aspects. SW aspects still held mostly supportable wet snow conditions at 8,800' at 12:30 pm while E aspects at 9,400' did not. Small loose wet avalanches were easily skier triggered on test slopes steeper than 35 degrees on slopes with ESE-SE aspects.

On N aspects at 9,600', surface melt freeze conditions had only affected the top 4 to 6 cm of the snowpack. Snow below the surface crust had yet to undergo melt freeze. Snow on upper elevation N aspects in this area is not in good to handle a rain on snow event.

Photo 1: Small loose wet avalanche triggered by ski cut on test slope at noted lat/long. (ESE aspect, 9,100', 11:25 am).

Photo 2: Deep wet snow encountered while approaching test slope of photo 1.

Photo 3: On the SE Ridge, a few hundred feet above the noted lat/long, a skier triggered collapse with whumpf was triggered in the area of this photo. Collapsed area was 4 to 5 m in diameter on low angle SSE aspect ridgetop feature. Weak (1F hard) but still skier supportable crust collapsed on F hard wet snow below it that had not refrozen last night.